I am not the type of person to leave poor reviews, and I feel bad doing this even now, but I hope to save someone else from ending up in my situation.
I will go into more detail below, but in summary: poor advice from TWM has lost me at least 50k Euros, and the situation is still ongoing.
I hired TWM to help me purchase a house in 2021. If I had written a review then, it would have been 5 stars. The agent I worked with was extremely helpful and communicative. As an expat, I felt very reassured.
I ended up searching around the Zaanstad area. TWM let me know that this was not their primary operating area, but that it was no problem to help me find something here. Houses in Zaanstad of a certain age are known for needing foundation repairs, and it made it very clear from the start that I could NOT afford foundation repairs, thus needed to avoid purchasing a house where this was necessary.
Eventually I found a property in the area that I liked a lot... but the house was a bit crooked, which again pointed to foundation concerns. I brought this up to the agent, who said that there was no special reason for concern, but the technical survey would let us know for sure.
The technical inspection was done via an inspector that the agent recommended. In the report, he said that there did not appear to be particular cause for concern in the foundation; that the house was of course tilted but he didn't notice anything abnormal. He also mentioned that a specific foundation report could tell us more, but that he didn't think this was necessary.
I once again got in touch with the agent, and asked to be sure about the foundation problem. Once again I was told there was no cause for concern. I asked the agent about an appropriate offer to make on the house, and he approved the offer I wanted to make, saying that it was a good offer for the property. All went well, I purchased the house and moved in.
After this, my situation changed unexpectedly, and at the end of 2023, it became clear I would be moving away from the Netherlands. I knew the turnaround time was quite short, so I hoped only to break even on the house sale. I got in touch with TWM again to handle the sale, as I had such a positive experience with them before. This is when it became clear that the advice they gave me when purchasing the house was bad. As soon as we started trying to sell the house, every potential buyer cited foundation concerns. What was "not a problem" became the reason that no one would buy the house... and having lived in the house for only 2 years (November 2021-November 2023), I have a hard time believing that the foundation deteriorated from "no cause for concern, completely normal" to "NEEDS IMMEDIATE RENOVATION" in that short period of time.
At the time of writing, I have had the house listed for sale for 50,000 Euros less than what I paid, and still cannot get an offer of this amount. This is the minimum amount I can accept and pay off the mortgage; any lower, and I will still be making mortgage payments.
Because TWM seemed so earnest and genuine otherwise (this is the reason I'm still giving 2 stars rather than 1), I'd like to believe that this was an honest mistake. I spoke with some other makelaardij, and those who were NOT local to Zaanstad seemed to agree with TWM. On paper, they thought the house should definitely be able to sell for this price without issue. Only a local Zaanstad makelaar told me differently. So I suspect this is a case of them not knowing the local area, and not anything malicious.
That said, I made the purchase and offer with their recommendation, and hired them to ensure I paid a fair price, as I'm not knowledgeable about real estate. And I can't say this was anything but a failure on their part, even if the mistake was honest. This has derailed my life, and the only loss TWM suffers is the time taken trying to sell the property. Which is probably still covered by their cut of the generous offer I made on the house to begin with, by their recommendation.
